Wow, this is very exciting news, and I look forward to checking it out. Thank you very much for the input.
Regards, John drmail377 wrote: > > John, You might want to have a look at the 32 bit Parallax Propeller > processor - is has eight concurrent-running cores or "cogs" as they > call them. Multi-core may be the wave of the future, and it is so nice > to be freed from wrestling with interrupts. Natively it uses a > language called Spin and of-course assembler. However, Imagecraft > recently released a relatively affordable professional C compiler for > the Propeller (http://www.imagecraft.com <http://www.imagecraft.com>). > > The chip costs $12 USD (ouch) in unit quantity and there IS a 40-pin > DIP version available for those who hand-roll. There's a ready-to-run > (less wall-wart power supply) Propeller Proto-Board for around $20 USD > including regulators, processor, flash memory etc. Add a few resistors > and the Propeller will output composite video or VGA, text or > graphics. See www.parallax.com. > > There are some down-sides to the Propeller. First off, you need a way > to physically program it. You have two options: 1. RS-232 with via a > few added components, or 2. a USB/serial transceiver like an FTDI > FT232RL. Parallax sells a Prop-Plug dongle for the USB solution, but > they charge something like $30USD for each one (double ouch). You > could build one for about half as much. Propeller has no internal > A/D's or D/A's, no multiplier/dividers, and no Intellectual Property > (IP) protection (a bootloader loads your application from I2C EEPROM. > During development you can load RAM directly from the PC so as to not > wear out the EEPROM, much faster too), there are lots of precision > timer-counters though (2 per cog). I wish it had a little more RAM for > a larger buffer when it runs native video and VGA output. The free > Propeller Tool development environment runs only in Windows. > > There lots are free "Objects" for the Propeller collected on the > Parallax Object Exchange site. There you will find floating point > objects, video drivers, lcd drivers, you name it. Lastly there is a > great user forum adjoined to the Parallax site: > http://forums.parallax.com <http://forums.parallax.com> > > 73's David >
